Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLOVEN — “ASTONISHMENT OF HEART”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 242023
 

Sometimes we know an encyclopedia’s worth of information about a metal band, especially those who’ve been around for decades and play to packed arenas. Other times we have almost nothing other than the music. This is one of those times.

All we know about Cloven is that they’re from somewhere in Canada and that sometime in the future, most likely next year, they will release an album named Chance Encounter of Flesh and Nail. We’ve also been told that the song from the album we’re premiering today was a decade in the making. But that’s all we know.

Nosy people that we are, we’re left curious, but even when we know a lot about who is in a band, where they’re located, what inspired them, etc., etc., it’s still the music that must carry the day, and “Astonishment of Heart” does that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OLDEST SEA — “THE MACHINES THAT MADE US OLD”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 242023
 

Our site’s name states a rule, but it has always been more preferential than fanatical, more tongue-in-cheek than belligerently adamant. And so we make exceptions, but still, they must be earned.

And now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can begin presenting one of those well-earned exceptions — not just well-earned, but too astonishing to brush away.

The centerpiece of the long song you’re about to hear, and the key feature that makes it both spellbinding and emotionally crushing, is the voice of Samantha Marandola, who with her husband Andrew are the duo behind the band Oldest Sea from rural New Jersey, and whose new album A Birdsong, A Ghost will be released on December 1st by Darkest Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BIZARREKULT

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Nov 242023
 

(Today we present a discussion by Comrade Aleks with the always-interesting Roman from the unconventional Norway-based black metal band Bizarrekult, whose sophomore full-length was released last January by Season of Mist.)

There are too many bands nowadays, and it’s difficult to keep in mind all the new releases which deserve your attention. We already interviewed Roman “Bizarre”, the leader of Bizarrekult, about a two years ago discussing the band’s long story, his relocation from Siberia to Norway, and his first Bizarrekult album Vi overlevde. The band was heavily rooted in black metal, but back then it already demonstrated a lean towards progression in other directions.

Their second album Den tapte krigen, released by Season of Mist Underground Activists in January 2023, and the sense of artistic freedom which fills it, is exciting. There was no way but to get in touch with Roman again. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE SECOND FOVEA — “VIBORA”

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Nov 232023
 

Today marks the fifth time we’ve written about and/or premiered singles by The Second Fovea (a band who began in India and are now based in the San Francisco Bay area) — and thus we’ve covered all of them to date. Thematically, each one has been different from the ones before, but all of them driven by a socio-political consciousness:

“Headshot” was a condemnation of hate crimes and racism across the globe. “Manta” was devoted to the majesty and mystery of the creatures for whom the song was named and tried to help spread the word about their conservation (we featured two different videos for that song). “The Echoing Habitat” called attention to our relentless pollution of the oceans with plastics. And today we have a fourth single, “Vibora“, which takes as its subject a metaphor for the lethal consequences of greed.

Just as the band’s lyrical themes have differed, the music has differed too, from song to song, and it changes again here, in part due to the appearance of the band’s new permanent vocalist, “Lalit Mehta“, who lives in Dublin, Ireland. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FRAUGHT — “TRANSFIXED ON DYING LIGHT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 232023
 

Here in the U.S. many people are celebrating Thanksgiving Day today, a national holiday first officially announced by Abraham Lincoln during our Civil War but modeled on a 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists (“Pilgrims”) of Plymouth and the Wampanoag indigenous people (who had previously occupied the Plymouth site but had been decimated by smallpox).

We have many things to be thankful for here at our humble site today, and one of those is Transfixed on Dying Light, the debut album by the Irish band Fraught. Founded in 2018, they survived a change of name (from Drought to Fraught), the rude interferences of the covid pandemic, and the kinds of other difficulties that beset any band trying to make underground music they believe in rather than following whatever way the prevailing winds are blowing.

Fraught are one of those bands who are given to experimentation, inspired by their many influences but driven to interweave them in ways that don’t neatly get circled by genre boundaries. That was already becoming evident in their MMXIX demo (released in 2020) and their first EP, 2021’s Splitting Tongues, but more evident still in this new album, which we’re giving you the chance to hear in advance of its release tomorrow by Argonauta Records. Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 232023
 

(In September Nuclear Blast released a new album by the UK’s Sylosis. Our writer DGR, who never rushes into anything, finally got around to setting down thoughts about it, which is what you’ll find below.)

If you’ll forgive the slightly more personal approach to this one, Sylosis are a band that I’ve followed for a long time now, spanning almost a decade plus of their career – starting when they first signed with Roadrunner (they popped up on their news page and believe it or not, it was one of the ways I would find bands) and then across multiple record labels, lineup changes, and even a hiatus while its members spread out to other projects.

I’ve espoused the theory before on this site but I’ve always felt that Sylosis are one of those groups that are a fantastic gateway band, mostly credited to their three-part combination of thrash, metalcore, and melodeath that has them resting somewhere in the center. It’s the VIT, INT, DEX triangle that you’ll see in some roleplaying games of their musical career. They may never fully dive into the full depths of being one particular type, but their combination of them has held enough power to draw people in from multiple directions, and just as possibly, to send people off into exploring other parts of the metal world once they make the same connection of what Sylosis are constructed out of. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PESSIMYSTIC — “BURNT OFFERING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Nov 222023
 

Pessimystic is a clever name for a band, one that amalgamates two concepts or themes that will be familiar to adherents of extreme metal. It was chosen by a trio of musicians from Ottawa who first came together only this year, though the writing process and general concept originated in 2022. They played their first show only in September, opening for Sunless and Thantifaxath, a couple of very good groups to share a stage with.

What we have for you today is a premiere stream of the first public recording of Pessimystic, an EP named Burnt Offering that will be released on November 24th. It’s described as “an apotropaic oblation of self-surrender through self-destruction and unity through detachment”, and conceptually it “contemplates divine retribution and conjures the apocalyptic imagery enshrined in the human psyche.” Pessimystic indeed. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2023: POPMATTERS’ LIST OF “THE 20 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2023”

 LISTMANIA 2023  6 Responses »
Nov 222023
 

As part of our annual NCS LISTMANIA extravaganza we re-publish lists of the year’s best metal that appear on web sites which appeal to vastly larger numbers of readers than we do — not because we believe those readers or the writers have better taste in metal than our community does, but more from a morbid curiosity about what the great unpoisoned masses are being told is best for them. It’s like opening a window that affords an insight into the way the rest of the world outside our own disease-ridden nooks and crannies perceives the music that is our daily sustenance.

One of those sites is PopMatters. It has been in existence since 1999. In its own words, the site “is an international magazine of cultural criticism and analysis” with a scope that includes “most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, sports, theatre, the visual arts, travel, and the Internet”. PopMatters, which has been independently owned and operated since its inception, claims that it is “the largest site that bridges academic and popular writing in the world”.

As in past years, PopMatters has today published a list of “The 20 Best Metal Albums“ of the year, again under the by-line of Spyros Stasis and Antonio Poscic. You’ll find that list below. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: WOE UNTO ME

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Nov 222023
 

(Not long ago the former Belarusian band Woe Unto Me, now relocated to Poland, finished a  tour of Europe in support of their exceptional 2023 album released by M-Theory Audio. At a break in the tour Comrade Aleks conducted an extensive interview of the band’s co-founder Artyom Serdyuk, and at last we present that today.)

Woe Unto Me (Grodno, Belarus) crossed the borders of funeral doom metal some time ago, but we label them now as a funeral band almost by inertia. Both the EP Spiral-Shaped Hopewreck that we discussed two years ago here with one of the band’s founders Artyom Serdyuk (guitars, vocals, keyboards) and the new, third album Along the Meandering Ordeals, Reshape the Pivot of Harmony carry us further to the territories of the progressive genre with the deep atmospheric feeling.

The band just returned from a mini-tour and now the guys prepare to start another one, so I’ve tried to catch up with Artyom again and to talk about the new album and the situation around the band. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TODOMAL — “A GREATER GOOD”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 212023
 

The odds are high that once you’ve seen the painting above by Paloma Pájaro that adorns the cover of TodoMal‘s new album The Greater Good, you won’t forget it. The odds are also high that it may perplex you. The choosing of the art was obviously unconventional, but then again, so is the music.

The Greater Good is the second full-length by the TodoMal duo of Christopher B. Wildman and Javier Fernández, following the release of Ultracrepidarian in 2021. As they conceive it, the new album follows dark paths, “where doubts about what is right or wrong, what we do in this world to earn redemption, or why we have a nefarious tendency to destroy what we love are depicted against a smoldering forest”. “The journey continues,” as they say, “despite the obstacles”.

And so we have a Spanish band whose name means something like “all is evil” or “all is wrong” ambitiously seeking “The Greater Good”. They put a lot of thought and work into making it a continuation from their first album that would both expand their ambitions and manifest them more precisely, and today you’ll be able to hear every minute of what they achieved in advance of its release on November 24th by Ardua Music. Continue reading »

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